The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a multi-gene family unique to the vertebrates, whose products function to present peptides to T cells. Certain MHC loci are highly polymorphic, and this polymorphism is maintained by a form of balancing selection, probably overdominant selection. This selection has several consequences for MHC biology that make these genes different from neutrally e...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causal agent of tuberculosis (TB), remains a major public health throughout the world causing high mortality in humans. According to the report published by the World Health Organization in 2009, 9.3 million new cases of TB were declared in the world and 1.3 million HIV-negative people died by this infection (http://www.who.int/tb/publications/global_report...

The genes of the human Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on the short area of chromosome 6, play a crucial role in the recognition of “self’ from “non-self”. In man this complex is referred to as the Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) system. These HLA antigens are grouped as Class I and Class II depending on their distribution on nucleated cells. HLA antigens (three of Class I, HLAs A, B and C...

Genetic resistance to diseases is a multigenic trait governed mainly by the immune system and its interactions with many physiologic and environmental factors. In the adaptive immunity, T cell and B cell responses, the specific recognition of antigens and interactions between antigen presenting cells, T cells and B cells are crucial. It occurs through a network of mediator proteins such as the ...

Alloantisera directed against chicken class I MHC (BFIV) antigens were produced by using transfected cell lines expressing cloned BFIV sequences. The cloned BFIV sequences were from haplotypes *12, *13, and *21. Two laboratory-derived class I mutant sequences (BFIV13m126 and BFIV21m78) were developed to analyze cross-reactive epitopes and to induce specific alloantisera. Antisera were tested in...

HIV-1 is one of the most genetically variable viruses ever encountered. However, as described in SE Asia, the inter-clade genetic diversity of HIV-I may be relatively conserved at the population level. This relative lack of diversity may partially be attributed to the maturity of the epidemic in the region, however social and genetic factors may be operative. This is suggested by the continued ...

The HLA-E locus is characterized by limited polymorphism and low levels of cell surface expression. However, the function of the products of this nonclassical MHC class I gene remains unknown. To evaluate the conservation of the MHC-E locus throughout anthropoid primate evolution, we identified the homologue of the HLA-E locus in six different New World monkey species. Full-length sequencing of...

The growth hormone gene could be an attractive candidate gene for milk production in goats. Single-strand conformation polymorphism was used to identify polymorphism at the goat growth hormone (gGH) gene. For this purpose, genotyping of 90 Talli goat breeds was performed. Nine conformational patterns were observed in exon 4 of the gGH gene, with frequencies of 27.7% for the homozygous pattern (...

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of immunity genes has been reported to influence mate choice in vertebrates, and a recent study presented genetic evidence for this effect in humans. Specifically, greater dissimilarity at the MHC locus was reported for European-American mates (parents in HapMap Phase 2 trios) than for non-mates. Here we show that the results depend on a few extreme da...